It is great to be enthusiastic and positive when setting our goals. When setting goals, let's be careful to set goals that are likely to energize and encourage us when we have done our best to achieve them, rather than cause us too much pain if we fall short of our goal.
With this in mind, I am cautious about making goals that require achieving a particular level of success relative to others. I would recommend setting goals independent of how other people do.
Think about athletes. When we watch a sports competition, we celebrate the victors and it is sometimes said that second place is the first loser. Of course, I want to achieve my highest possible level of success, though it is most likely that of the billions of other people in world there might be one other person who can achieve more than me. So if I am focused on being number one, even if I achieve more than everyone else in the world besides that one person who achieve more than me, I might feel like a failure because I didn't make number one.
A friend of mine told me about how she was on one of the Olympic teams. For her sport they had three groups A, B and C. A was the best, B were the backups, and C were those who pretty much had no chance of going to the Olympics. She was on the C team. She said that it was difficult not feeling bad since in her peer group she was in the bottom third. The crazy thing is that if she went to any community around the world, they would be blown away with her athletic abilities and the local athletes would praise her and say how much they wished they had her abilities.
As a counter example, a good friend of mine was told at a young age that she had no talent for dance and should give it up. Despite this advice, she loved dance and decided to dedicate her life to dance. She found a way to make a living as a dance instructor and dancer. She always realized that she would never be a world class dancer, though she was just thrilled to be doing what she loved to do.
Let's try and find a way to do this in our life. It is great to make huge vision goals. I know a website blog who's goal is to help 10 million people. This is a huge goal and notice how it is independent from how other blogs do.
Be careful about being too concerned about beating out all other competitors. Find out what it is that we really want and work towards getting as much of it as we can.
With this in mind, I am cautious about making goals that require achieving a particular level of success relative to others. I would recommend setting goals independent of how other people do.
Think about athletes. When we watch a sports competition, we celebrate the victors and it is sometimes said that second place is the first loser. Of course, I want to achieve my highest possible level of success, though it is most likely that of the billions of other people in world there might be one other person who can achieve more than me. So if I am focused on being number one, even if I achieve more than everyone else in the world besides that one person who achieve more than me, I might feel like a failure because I didn't make number one.
A friend of mine told me about how she was on one of the Olympic teams. For her sport they had three groups A, B and C. A was the best, B were the backups, and C were those who pretty much had no chance of going to the Olympics. She was on the C team. She said that it was difficult not feeling bad since in her peer group she was in the bottom third. The crazy thing is that if she went to any community around the world, they would be blown away with her athletic abilities and the local athletes would praise her and say how much they wished they had her abilities.
As a counter example, a good friend of mine was told at a young age that she had no talent for dance and should give it up. Despite this advice, she loved dance and decided to dedicate her life to dance. She found a way to make a living as a dance instructor and dancer. She always realized that she would never be a world class dancer, though she was just thrilled to be doing what she loved to do.
Let's try and find a way to do this in our life. It is great to make huge vision goals. I know a website blog who's goal is to help 10 million people. This is a huge goal and notice how it is independent from how other blogs do.
Be careful about being too concerned about beating out all other competitors. Find out what it is that we really want and work towards getting as much of it as we can.
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